Anredera cordifolia - Madeira Vine

Madeira Vine is an evergreen climber that grows from fleshy rhizomes. It has bright green, heart-shaped, fleshy shiny leaves 4-13 cm long. Wart-like tubers are produced on aerial stems and are a key to identifying the plant. It produces masses of small fragrant, cream flowers on hanging racemes, which may be up to 30 cm long. Flowers are about 5 mm across, fragrant. Flowers are white, inflexed, patent in anthesis; tepals ovate or oblong to elliptic, 3 x 2 mm, tip blunt. Stamens are white; filaments reflexed at tip in bud, spreading in anthesis. Style is white, split to 3 stigmatic arms, each with 1 club-shaped or broadly elliptic stigma. Although this species has both male and female flowers they rarely reproduce sexually and produce seed. This species often spreads through its own vegetative growth, but can easily be transported by human activities. If fragments end up in waterways, they are easily transported to new locations in this manner.